Forty-two years ago, Inez van Lamsweerde – then a willowy, 21-year-old student at the Amsterdam Fashion Academy – walked into a life-drawing class. Vinoodh Matadin, two years her senior, was the (fully clothed) subject, standing on a table. “I remember the door opened, and she arrived dressed completely in black,” says Matadin. “I was like, ‘Who the hell is that?’” The whole class noticed their connection, he insists.
Jennifer Lawrence shot for W Magazine, 2010 © Inez & Vinoodh
On a Sunday morning in Paris, I can sense it, too, as Matadin smiles across the breakfast table at van Lamsweerde. They became a couple six years after they first locked eyes, began to work together a year later, and have since developed a joint photographic language that is as distinctive as it is influential. In the ’90s and early 2000s, their campaigns for Balenciaga and Yohji Yamamoto, starring models Christy Turlington, Hannelore Knuts and Maggie Rizer, captured the mood of an era. More recently, their celebrity portraits have gained cult status: Taylor Swift with a cat draped around her neck like a shawl; Lady Gaga with three heads; Hunter Schafer and Michaela Coel swathed in furs. Their work from the past four decades is the subject of a major retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands, opening 21 March.
